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On delving into the mind of an Investigative
Journalist.

The Anna Raccoon Archives

by Anna Raccoon on March 10, 2013

We don’t often get the chance to plumb the Delphian depths of the Investigative Journalist’s crania. Reading the Pollard report transcripts as Nick Pollard gamely ventured into that philosopher’s bourn known as Merion Jones’s ethical compass, one of the most highly paid of that genre, was an eye opener – turns out they do less investigation than yer average spotty blogger with one eye on getting the shirt sued off his back. Ably assisted by an ‘expert’ to send Surrey Police an e-mail….

Then we had the grandly titled Bureau of Investigative Journalism doing a full belly flop, landing in undignified fashion, wallet up, in front of Lord MacAlpine’s voracious lawyers.

Today we are treated to a full eleven pages of the pinnacle of the art – the political editor of the most respected Sunday broadsheet explains just how tiring, how boring, how inconvenient it is when a source offers you the scalp of a cabinet minister on a plate. Eat your heart out fellow bloggers, as you slave through the night deciphering e-mails from the University of East Anglia to write the definitive article on the Machiavellian ways of the climate change industry. Or sink your teeth into the ankle of the anti-smoking industry month after relentless month.

You have no idea how tiresome the life of a political editor can be.

Why Vince Cable’s chief economist is likely to drop in late at night and you have to search your fridge for ‘fresh prawns and Pinot Grigio’ to sustain them – they’d be lucky to find the tab end of a cold sausage and the cabbage I was saving for bubble and squeak in my fridge – which is possibly why I don’t have such illustrious late night guests. Things are different in the high end world of investigative journalism.

Surely even your bored and care worn political editor feels a frisson of excitement when your guest turns out to be carrying a tape nailing said cabinet minister? Nah, you get irritated when she fiddles with the tape recorder controls – ‘clearly very tired and hated technology’. You reflect – in print at a later date, story safely squirreled away – how ‘shrill her voice sounded’ and how her language was just de trop in your melliferous household with ’expletives spat out in increasingly hysterical tones in her distinctive Greek accent’.

Bloody foreign plebs cluttering up the kitchen table eating all your Waitrose prawns! Why you can barely summon up the enthusiasm to speak when she finally plays the tape, and leave it to your hubby:

“It’s not enough,” my husband said flatly. This was not his story, but after 15 years on Fleet Street as an investigative reporter he knows the standard of proof required to publish explosive allegations about someone with money and power.

Now your average blogger would have been working through the night checking out the story, was the murder ‘victim‘ actually dead, for instance, who do I know who can speak German? (Thanks Tim Worstall!), but your illustrious political editor foreswears all that legwork, they turf the guest out into the night with instructions to come back with a fully proofed copper bottomed story…..in fact when the guest legs it off to the Mail on Sunday in the hope of finding someone who might actually investigate the story, they complain bitterly:

She had double-crossed me. While I was busy protecting her identity, she had been busy revealing all to a rival newspaper, The Mail on Sunday. Even worse, she had handed it a copy of the tapes. This was an extraordinary betrayal and deeply underhand after everything we had been through together. Our relationship had been based on trust. I had kept my side of the bargain; she had broken hers.

[…] She had been trying to ride two horses: broadsheet and tabloid. It was a dangerous game and it was no surprise that she fell off.

The Mail on Sunday, being a downmarket tabloid apparently didn’t have the same scruples about getting their hands dirty and actually investigating the story:

Reporters were able to prove that Vicky had been in central London on the day Huhne’s BMW was clocked speeding in Essex. He had been in Strasbourg that day. His routine was to fly back to Stansted, where he left his car, and drive home, placing him squarely at the scene of the offence.

I wonder whether Isabella really deserves the title of ‘investigative journalist’ – should it not be ‘instigative journalist’;

“In the long message that followed I urged her to tell her story openly. I felt this would achieve her objective — bringing Huhne down — with the minimum damage to her own reputation. She would simply tell the truth and see what happened. I also suggested ghostwriting a long article for her.”

[…] as you say, we may have to be patient, which I’m not feeling and I’m sure you’re not either (Sunday Times splash yesterday named him [Huhne] and Tim Farron as Clegg’s main threats for the leadership. I’d like to topple him before there’s any danger of that….)”

That look suspiciously to me as though it is Isabella’s objective to topple Huhne!

Still, bored Isabella manfully soldiered on with the story, despite getting up the duff, an altogether more absorbing matter than researching a story, she had, after all, promised her Editor that she ‘wouldn’t go off the radar whilst pregnant’. An unfortunate choice of phrase, since Isabella managed to get very much on the radar during this period – done for speeding herself. We know this detail because actually the entire article could be sub-titled the trials and tribulations of ‘being Isabella’ complete with professionally posed picture of the blond bombshell to compare with the shot of a careworn Vicky Price.

So, not-off-the-radar Isabella graciously agrees to spend £75 odd quid of the Sunday Times’ money taking Vicky to ’not a fancy restaurant’ – just one where they relieve you of £75 for a bottle of mineral water, a Chicken Caesar salad and a lump of Sea Bass. Where Isabella, suffering for her art as ever, is forced to read a run down of Chris Huhne’s private finances.

She had a copy of his financial declaration with her and produced it rather furtively. She wondered if there was anything of journalistic interest. I skimmed the various investments. Nothing jumped out.

I have it all somewhere in an old notebook: details of multiple houses, Isas, pension funds and bank accounts, as well as lump sums he received from his elderly father. It added up to about £5m.

‘Nothing jumped out’. Not to a serious Political Editor maybe, but we bloggers are bottom feeders. How about what ‘he received from his elderly father’? Did you think to look into that further?

See, Chris Huhne made a lot of money selling shares his Father had sold him cheaply when Dad’s company was floated on the stock market. So what was Dad’s company? ‘Traffic Safety Systems‘. What do they do? Oh, just supply speed cameras and CCTV to Police forces across the country. Including Essex.

Quite literally hoist on his own petard…..well, at least the family petard. I haven’t laughed so much since I found Ernest Marples’ car in the car pound at the Elephant and Castle – towed away from one of his own parking meters….

{28 comments }

Mizz MildredMarch 12, 2013 at 10:16

Listening to LBC radio, while ironing yesterday, late afternoon. Same sort of varied comments about the twin sentences, as quoted above. The new archbishop got pushed off his slot till later, while the usual speculation was allowed free reign. Shakespeare couldn’t have written a better plot for this family tragedy. An ex prisoner was produced to speak about the trauma of ‘the cage’, when entering prison. He spent somewhat longer in prison and had an equally precipitous fall for a similar crime. Yet he can be wheeled out to pass comment on the prison bit. A certain couple from the Knutsford constituency pop up regularly on TV. So all is not lost for Mr Huh. When the next parliamentary fool puts his foot in the murky pool and the crocodile journalist snaps at it. Mr Huh can be produced to pass an apt comment, his agent may negotiate a good fee. I feel that plotting a downfall is probably in the genes of the English establishment. They cannot help it. A really entertaining blog Anna Racoon.

GildasTheMonkMarch 12, 2013 at 09:34

What delicious irony. Meanwhile, was it Plato who said that if you seek revenge, you will need to dig two graves?

2MacMarch 11, 2013 at 22:18

A few comments to add.

Huhne is an asshole and I take great joy that a former Cabinet Minister of the current Gov is about to be jailed.

The wife knew what she was doing and took revenge after getting dumped. It happens.

As for how the story surfaced… I.Oakeshott is a cousin of Lord Oakshott who has been briefing for Vince Cable and attacking Osborne & Tories. He previously ran Huhnes leadership campaign. He resigned from Treasury last year after calling Osbourne “work experience chancellor”.

Lord Oakeshott is a Fabian type who likes idea of Lib/Lab coalition.

A dysfunctional conspiracy or manipulation gone wrong.

What if…Vicky Price story was harnessed to control Huhne with idea of quashing it via compliant Journalist as part of a damage attack to current Lib/Con coalition to herald in Vince.

Price took story to Mail when they quashed it. Mail for own reasons decided to take out Huhne and put LibDems on back foot.

After Clegg backed Huhne, Oakeshott gave cops all correspondence before appeal and sealed Huhnes fate as guilty. Without this evidence CPS had no case.

All a bit convenient for Vince. I suspect Price was so keen to burn Huhne she did not consider she would get jailed.

Oakshott gave the impression of carefully backtracking, in the interview I saw (Andrew Neil could have been a little tougher, I thought).

And this sordid tale does indeed appear to lift the lid on what journalists are really like. But its not something I was unaware of. For the amount of power they have, journalists are ruthless, unelected, unaccountable, and often ridiculously thick-skinned (or at least they expect others to be!). They will go to some lengths to get a story.

Watching Oakshott I felt uncomfortable watching a real-life journalist justifying their actions. They must all tell themselves things like this – that it’s for the public good etcetc. Meanwhile, they do things that can, and do, make a wreckage of people’s lives.

How glib the self-justifications can appear. I suppose the bottom line is whether they can get away with what they’ve done – it must be of some embarrassment to Oakshott that this correspondence was released.

Elena ‘andcartMarch 11, 2013 at 15:45

Oh My God. That is just too, too funny. Huhne sold the shares his father sold to him cheaply when he launched the family business in Speed Cameras. You really couldn’t make that up.Personally, I think that Vicky Price probably was pressured into taking her husband’s speeding points, but it can’t be allowed, and I can’t get frightfully upset about it.And what a dickhead. A 5 Million Pound fortune and he didn’t want to employ a driver. So much care for the working classes.

Robert EdwardsMarch 11, 2013 at 14:16

I had failed to note the Denis McShane connection.

Ergh! This dismal quartet really does belong in the nastier part of the waxworks; I simply cannot imagine…

The usual Racoon humour about the Speed Camera Compnany —-Just a little unkind of Ms Racoon to call Mc Alpines lawyers voracious in my opinion —–if I had been acting for Mc Alpine I would have really really spilled blood and felt pretty self righteous for so doing as I picked up my fees. As to Huhne/Pryce//Isabel/ All the rest —- Its the stench of hypocricy and self justification they leave behind them that they seem to think makes them somehow acceptable . Racoons have a great sense of smell and wash things well before eating them and as always Ms Raccon offers the Huhne/Pryce/Isabel crew up for supper with the stench hypocricy and self justification suitably washed off.

OscarMarch 11, 2013 at 06:48

there is a reason they are called reptiles and it’s nothing to do with StIcke.

As Anna has very well pointed out, this thoroughly lazy and stupid woman, Oakeshott, was delivered a dream political story on a plate that most journalists would kill or sell their grandmothers for, (which I suspect she and her colleagues would have no qualms of doing).

Yet she has the cheek to complain to all and sundry about how insubstantial the story was! Vicky Pryce, whatever bad choices she has made. (Chris Huhne AND Denis McShane?! Dear God.). Ms Pryce and her family are facing a most miserable future which includes possible imprisonment and certain public humiliation.

So what does the caring belle of the Sunday Times political desk do? This member of a family of diplomats and Labour/Lib Dem politicians from whom the uninitiated would expect compassion and understanding. This same lady who, very likely, made an absolute mint from all the bien pensant publications she sold her stories to. This very same lady who actively encouraged and benefitted from this real-time family car crash. This is what the overpaid, underbrained morality-lite bimbo is wrtiting:

My 8 year old grandson: Granpa, do you shave your head?Grrrr.But back to the ghastlies.Listening to the comments on R4 this pm re the sentences given to them; ‘…can’t see this is a sensible use of public money, putting them in jail…; ..they don’t present any risk to anybody…..’And various like comments by ex colleague infering that somehow these were special people and were being victimised.Didn’t notice any concern for all the other convicts guilty of non violent crime.A class. apart.

It’d have been cheaper and much more punishing to have sentenced them to be handcuffed together for one month in their old bedroom, with no telly or radio. Food and personal care to be supplied by Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell (paid £800,000 at their expense) and lavatorial duties to be adminstered loco-in-parentis, by Ms Oakeshitt.

Now, that’s what I call proper Justice….

Jonathan MasonMarch 11, 2013 at 18:30

He wants to take on more of an air of eminence grise as befits a distinguished guest of Her Majesty.